Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Craig "Tiger" Wright, East Bay Dragons. This frame is a Motor Shop frame, but it doesn't have the traditional frame loop around the axle plate, it has pointed axle plate tubes! Custom made for Craig by the Motor Shop.

Monday, December 29, 2008

Von Dutch did a lot of work for Barris. As a matter of fact, Dutch did the big Script lettering on the front of Barris' shop in L.A. This BSA looks like Von Dutch did the pinstripes and flames, but he didn't. Like Grabowski's bike Six Pack, it was done by Dean Jeffries. Tell me Jeffries didn't pick up a bunch hanging around with Dutch.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Friday, December 26, 2008

Hard to believe this was built almost 44 years ago. This has been one of my favorite bikes ever since I saw it in '65. Norm Grabowski took a '41 shaft drive Indian frame, and transplanted a Corvair flat 6 into it. I knew Boyd DeFrance of D&D, made the adapter to link the Indian shaft drive to the engine, and cast the "Six Pack" valve covers. What I didn't know until a little while ago, was the fact that I was wrong on who striped it. From the striping style, I always thought Von Dutch had done it. It turns out Dean Jeffries did it. An easy mistake to make, because Jeffries was a Von Dutch protege'.

You may have never seen this configuration, though. Norm took a German-made Steib sidehack frame, and added a narrowed and sectioned fiberglass T bucket body from CT Automotive to it. He did this around '67-'68. Tony Nancy did the upholstery, and Jeffries matched in his striping.

Notice the new pipe layout to accomodate the sidehack. Truly a beautifull, hand-built motorcycle.

Monday, December 22, 2008

"The most insane burnout I ever seen was by Dick Allen on his trike. That trike was the baddest bike ever". Dick had been at Roth Studios on a sunny day in the late '60's, and was pulling out onto the street on his V8 trike, while Darryl was standing by the shop doors.

"I was yelling at Dick to do a burnout, so he looked both ways as he pulled out and just full-throttled the bike. He lit 'em up out of the driveway and was drifting sideways down the street before the rear wheels hooked and right before he went under a bobtail truck, the bike straightened out and he barely went around it. I can close my eyes and still see it. Amazing".

Well, this frame doesn't get any better. I got those gross sidepanels cut off, and the fillers cut off the seat forging area....not good. You can see, there's really no saving that neck forging. Near as I can figure, it measures like it was raked out to about 38 degrees, but everything is totally hacked & whacked.

So, what we're going to do, is cut the frame's backbone a couple inches in front of the seat forging area, and then take a cut on the front downtube about 2/3 the way down from the neck, and toss it in the scrap frame pile. We're going to make a new backbone, neck, lower tank frame tube, and a partial replacement of the front downtube.

We'll take the neck height up about an inch higher than stock, but we'll keep it at around 32-35 degrees. When we rebuild the neck area, we're going to try and give it the look of a 45's neck forging. We're also going to try and keep the "swan's neck" shape of the front downtube, too. While we're at it, we're going to see if we can squeeze a 5 speed in back there, too.

But the first thing on the agenda is to figure out the peliminary cuts, do those, and then we can get at the seatpost repair. Once that's done, we can start the rest of it's reconstruction.

I wonder why at all the events, the cute girls talk to Steve, and not me???

Steve, the guy that comes in and helps me out part-time, wanted to build his first completely ground-up bike. So, a year ago we started on this for him. Steve worked his ass off on this bike, and with a little cough, cough looking over my shoulder , he built himself a pretty nice ride. He and I handled the fabrication and assembly, and Kirk Taylor of Custom Design Studios, in Novato CA handled the paint, silver leaf, and the pinstripes. He did a killer job.

It's in the Winter 2008 issue of Street Chopper magazine. I understand not every place that handles SourceInterlink's magazines has this on their racks, so you might have to try a couple places. Hey, do it for Steve!, but I understand if this issue sells well, they're gonna take SC to 4 times a year in '09.

I bought this VL frame at swap meet a few years ago, for a couple Hundred bucks. It was painted a nasty ol' kandy brandywine, and everything was covered in bondo. Well, I sent it out to sandblasting, and this is what came back.

As you can see, some drug addict in the '60's modified this for (I think) a Knucklehead. From what I understand, somebody was actually riding it around like this. It kinda looks like he got a cutting torch for his birthday, then he got a stick welder for Christmas.

The neck forging area is totally fucked, the seatpost is broken below the oil tank mount (because the engine wasn't mounted right), and he welded a later 4 speed mounting plate over the top of the original transmission plate - to name a few things wrong with it.

I stuck this away in the storage building, and figured I'd get to it one of these days. Well, this is one of these days, and things are slow around here, so why not? I think you'll find this interesting........

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About Me

Irish Rich is the owner of Shamrock Fabrication/Irish Rich Custom Cycles, a "no frills" custom motorcycle and fabrication shop. Rich has been involved with custom motorcycles and hot rods for over 44 years, and is a member of the Sinners, out of Southern California. Rich and his motorcycles have appeared in Street Chopper, DicE Magazine, The Horse, Easyriders, IronWorks, S&S Performance Times, Bigtwin, Show Class Magazine, Jesse James' documentary "The History Of The Chopper", One World Studios' "The Harbortown Bobber", and Joyrides Art Co.-"The Photography of Mark Kawakami". He also currently writes, and has written tech articles and feature stories for most of the custom motorcycle publications, and wrote an ongoing column for the first 16 issues of Greasy Kulture Magazine.